Quid Rides?

Have you ever wondered:
Why do you find something funny?
Why is your sense of humor is different from other people’s?
Who do you let “in” on the joke?
What if you replace “you” in those questions with “the Romans”?
If so then you’re in luck because in the class Quid Rides we will be analyzing humor until it isn’t even funny anymore!

Salvete, mihi nomen est Magistra McIntire (she/they), and I will be one of your teachers at Academy in LESS THAN A WEEK! It’s time to get hype, and it’s definitely time to get packing.

A little about me- I am a Latin teacher currently in Philadelphia, but I grew up in Fredericksburg at the Riverbend High School Latin program. I got my MA at Washington University in St. Louis, and I got my BA right where you will be MOX at Randolph-Macon College! Lately I’ve been enjoying volunteering at my local community garden, playing (very badly) in a recreational soccer league, and watching shows like Yellowjackets, Never Have I Ever, Queen Charlotte, and Taskmaster (Mae Martin got me back into it).

In Quid Rides we will be taking a sociological approach to the ancient world of humor. We will be focusing on a different type of humor each day and examining the theories of humor first posited by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian that underpin them. With so many different types of humor to examine, we will be translating works from  many different authors as well, including: Martial, Plautus, Macrobius, Petronius, Suetonius, Juvenal, Horace, Seneca, Novius, and even some nitty gritty graffiti.

I’m looking forward to a class of understanding the motivations of the ancient world, our modern society, and hopefully even ourselves a bit more... plus some goofs and spoofs.